The European Parliament on Tuesday finally approved new rules designed to improve working conditions for people working through Internet platforms. The purpose of the directive is to ensure that correct and fair employment contracts are concluded for people working through the platforms.
Some 5.5 million people in Europe work through online platforms and are now being denied contractual and social benefits to which they might be entitled due to misclassification of their employment status.
Vice-Chancellor of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications Sandra Särav explained to ERR why Estonia worked hard to – and together with some other countries achieved – a relaxation of the strictest points of the directive.
“As far as I know, Estonia has no problems with workers through platforms. According to statistics, for most of them this is an extra income. In fact, they already have income from other sources, working for the Bolt and Volt services is just additional income for them. Now we need clarify what problems need to be solved. Whether the problem is that these people do not have health insurance or that these people do not pay taxes,” Syarav said.
Bolt has been actively lobbying to get Estonian authorities to oppose the EU platform directive and find supporters of this position among other member states, Euractiv reports.
From emails obtained by Euractiv, it is clear that Bolt has been working hard to persuade Estonia to come out in support of the platforms and to try by any means necessary to make the directive more favorable to them rather than to workers.
In April last year, the ERR news portal wrote that the Vice-Chancellor of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Sandra Särav, headed the government relations department and the global sustainability department of Bolt from 2019 to 2021.
However, while working at the ministry, she did not indicate her Bolt stock options in her declaration of economic interests.
Sjarav herself then said that this was done out of ignorance, and although Bolt CEO Martin Villig is her friend, she is not involved in Bolt affairs in the ministry. Sjarav also explained the fact that the correspondence regarding the directive only now surfaced in Euroactiv as simply a human error.
“I would not say that we as a ministry deliberately hid the correspondence; it is still a human error. When we were asked to publish the correspondence, we did so. This means that it was not intentionally hidden. All this is an honest activity, and the real interest of Estonia, especially The Ministry of Economics is to protect companies. About 80 percent of all national laws of member countries come from the European Union. Our task as an Estonian state is to protect the legal system of Estonia, to protect our enterprises as much as possible. Therefore, I do not think that we have done anything. this is incorrect, unless they really forgot to register the correspondence by mistake,” Syarav explained.
Media reported that due to pressure, the final version of the directive became more lenient. According to the new directive, EU member states must ensure that a person performing work through an Internet platform is no longer considered by default to be self-employed, but an employee of a company. The new act also stipulates that a platform employee cannot be suspended or fired solely on the basis of a decision of an algorithm or automatic system. All decisions that significantly affect people working through platforms must be made by humans.
Tags: European Parliament updated rules working Internet platforms Radio news
